The controversial founding of Columbus Day

"One may not think of the month of daylight savings time, breast cancer awareness, and Oktoberfest as particularly controversial, but beneath the surface of several Catholic holidays in October are truths and memories that bring a maelstrom of protest from the modern world," writes Michael P. Foley in "The Controversial Holidays of October" (Latin Mass magazine, Summer 2009). In a previous article, Foley already discussed one of these: the Feast of the Holy Rosary's commemoration of the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto (October 7). In the current issue, he turns to two more "October surprises" -- Columbus Day (October 12 or the second Monday in October) and All Hallows' Eve (October 31).¹ Here we limit our attention to Columbus Day:

I should probably be given the stake for discussing a secular holiday in a column on the liturgical year, but Columbus Day merits our attention for several reasons. First the holiday owes its existence to the efforts of U.S. Catholic citizens, particularly the Knights of Columbus. In the 1900s the Knights lobbied state legislatures throughout the country to make the anniversary of America's discovery a holiday; not only did most states acquiesce, but the federal government eventually did as well, first as a national holiday in 1937 and then as a legal holiday (on which banks close) in 1971. Though they were instituted as a fraternal benefits organization, the Knights of Columbus were also keen to dispel anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States. One way to meet this goal was to emphasize America's debt to Catholic figures, starting with its papist discoverer. Not coincidentally, this fraternity, founded by an Irish priest, was named not after Saint Patrick but after the daring Italian who reached the shores of our hemisphere on a Spanish ship.

The Knights' strategy of claiming Columbus as a most Catholic of heroes was also a well-aimed counterattack. American historians had tried mightily to turn the famous seafarer into an Enlightenment figure, a secular saint championing scientific progress in the face of a superstitious Church still clinging to outdated ideas of a "flat earth." As it turns out, Columbus had nothing to do with the flat-earth debate; the story was invented out of whole cloth by Washington Irving in 1828 and later used as anti-Catholic propaganda to "prove" that that clerical religion was inherently hostile to rational inquiry.² Queen Isabella's geographical advisers knew the globe was globular; they rejected Columbus' proposal because they had a much more accurate grasp of it's massive circumference, rightly concluding that his plan to reach China via a western route in a matter of weeks was unsound.

Given the prevalence of the anti-Catholic flat-earth myth, it is not surprising that Pope Leo XIII celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' maiden voyage with these stirring (and perhaps overly generous) remarks:

But there is, besides, another reason, a unique one, why We consider that this immortal achievement should be recalled by Us with memorial words. For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum ... it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was [his] strongest motive ... so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church.³

Take that, Know Nothings!

Pall Over the Holiday

Ironically, after winning the battle for Columbus Day, many Catholics today would prefer not to be associated with either the man or his holiday. While most Latin American countries commemorate the date of Columbus' discovery as the Día de la Raza (the Day of the Race, that is, the day the races met), Hugo Chávez's Venezuela observes observes Día de la Resistencia Indigena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). Similarly, Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who made headlines for calling the victims of September 11 "little Eichmans,"⁴ has led the American Indian Movement's protests against the Columbus Day in Denver.

What Chavez and Churchill, in their characteristically understated ways, are alluding to the bleak events that followed Columbus' discovery. Despite the friendliness of the natives, Columbus' men initiated hostilities with them that culminated in a massacre, while Columbus himself enslaved a thousand Indians and instituted the repartimiento system that led to the serfdom of countless others for years to come. Combined with a wave of unintentionally imported diseases the local immune system had never encountered before, such treatment quickly decimated the Native American population.

Assessing Columbus

What, then, should we make of Columbus in light of his spotty record? I suggest five things.

First, it is clear that Columbus was not a good administrator on the land, and his incompetence led to cruelty. In fairness, however, before his undisciplined men destroyed relations with the native Taino or Arawaks, his goal was to protect them from the cannibalistic Caribs (one of the most savage peoples in the Americas) who were fast advancing. Indeed the Caribs remind us that the first step in assessing the Columbian legacy is overcoming any assumption that either side in the conflict has a monopoly on evil.

Second, it is important to remember that many of Columbus' contemporaries also deplored his deeds. Queen Isabel certainly did, which is why Columbus' third return to Spain was in chains, and Spanish law, thanks in large part to the Church's teaching about the full humanity of Native Americans, consistently condemned the actions of rapacious colonists. This is significant, for no other civilization has shown such a capacity for healthy self-criticism as the Christian. Indeed, the shrill condemnations of a Chavez or a Churchill are possible only because of the tradition of public self-examination first developed in Catholic societies.

Third, despite tragic costs, the benefits of European contract with the New World did far more good than harm. This is particularly true in the realm of evangelization. Columbus' genuine zeal to convert all peoples to Christianity should be commended rather than condemned. To depict all New World conversions as forced and foreign is, ironically, to patronize people of color, who were and are every bit as capable of seeing the beauty, truth, and goodness of the Gospel as their unwashed invaders.

Fourth, despite his flaws Columbus was a devout Catholic who, as Pope Leo XIII noted, was motivated by his Faith. His favorite prayers was Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via -- "may Jesus, along with Mary, be with us on the way."⁵ Columbus chose to depart into the unknown the morning after August 2, the feast of Our Lady of the Angels, so that his men could celebrate this Marian feast with their families; he even made sure that they received confession and Holy Communion in order to obtain the plenary indulgence available that day.⁶ Columbus' prayers were apparently answered: his tiny fleet reached land on October 12, the day after the Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.

Finally, Columbus Day praises not Columbus' explorations on land but his exploits at sea. We know that a single-minded man convinced the monarchs of Spain to fund an extremely hazardous journey with little likelihood of return, and that he pulled it off, not once but four times. We know that he was exceptionally courageous and resourceful, and we know that he was an outstanding seaman. There is nothing wrong with raising a glass to genuine courage and persistence, as long as one does not go on to use these to excuse other crimes and misdemeanors. I wonder if much of the animus against Columbus today really springs from a contemporary disdain for honor that would like to purge manhood of its chivalry and daring. As the historian William Carroll notes, "It is right to criticize the failings [of heroes], but wrong to deny their greatness and the inspiration they can give."⁷

And if there is any note of sorrow or regret to be struck on this otherwise celebratory occasion, it should not be fore the exceptional evil of the white man or the Catholic faith but for the universal darkness in man's heart so aptly explained by the doctrine of original sin. Yet, thanks be to God, this spiritual blight is never allowed to dwarf the triumph of the Cross, which providentially uses both vessels of honor and dishonor to meet its goals.

What to Do

How should one celebrate Columbus Day? In 1892 Pope Leo decreed that the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' discovery should be marked with a Solemn High Mass of the Most Holy Trinity either on October 12 or on the following Sunday.⁸ (This was mandatory for Spain, Italy, and the two Americas, and recommended for the rest of the world, since "it is fitting that an even from which all have derived benefit should be piously and gratefully commemorated by all"). Certainly Mass would be a good idea today as well, along with a fervent prayer for the spiritual future of both the Old and New Worlds. And all of the documents I have cited are worth reading for more information on Christopher Columbus.

Perhaps one could even enjoy these readings with one of the items rumored to have returned with Columbus on his first voyage: tobacco. I would recommend a pipe for the occasion, as a cigarette is far too lowly a thing for honoring either the noble savage or the noble explorer. As for food, one could turn to any of the nationalities involved: American, Italian, Spanish, or even Caribbean. And for the little ones, miniature Niñas, Santa Marias, and Pintas can be made out of walnut shells, toothpick masts, and paper sails and used to adorn a cake or have a race in the bathtub.(To be continued ...)

Notes

1. "The Feast of Our Fearsome Lady," TLM 16:4 (Fall 2007), pp. 60-61. [back]


2. For the fascinating history of this myth, see Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians(New York: Praeger, 1991). [back]


3. Quarto Abeunte Saeculo (1892), 2, italics added. [back]


4. He has also been sanctioned by his university for repeated acts of "serious research misconduct." [back]


5. For more on Columbus' fascinating Catholicism, see Fr. John Hardon's lectures on Columbus at http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Christopher_Columbus.htm. [back]


6. The indulgence of the Portiuncula. [back]


7. "Honoring Chrisopher Columbus," http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/COLUMBUS.HTM [back]


8. Quarto Abeunte Saeculo (1892), 9. [back]

[Michael P. Foley is associate professor of patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008) and Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Our present post was excerpted from Dr. Foley's article, "The Controversial Holidays of October," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 36-39, and is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Related

New Catholic offers has posted a copy of Leo XIII's encyclical on the Columbus quadricentennial, Quarto abeunte saeculo highlighting those parts of the text of special interest at "COLUMBUS NOSTER EST" (Rorate Caeli, October 12, 2009).

Two Great Apologists for the Catholic Faith

Peter A. Kwasniewski


The Meeting of the Countess Matilda and Anselm of Canterbury in
the Presence of Pope Urban II, by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
Whoever has followed the speeches and homilies of Pope Benedict even to a limited extent is aware that one of his major themes is the harmony of faith and reason—and not just their harmony, but the dependence of human reason on the creative divine Reason or Logos. For Pope Benedict, it is not merely the case that faith does not contradict reason, as if the two are compatible partners on an equal footing. Human reason is a finite and fallible light that derives from the prior, all-encompassing light of God, who is also the font of life, love, freedom, and wisdom. Therefore men can be truly reasonable and free only when they must submit their intellects and wills to this light and live in its radiance. Without this light, men are doomed to the darkness of self-will, the tempest of irrational urges, and ultimately the madness of nihilism. Put differently, unless we embrace God’s revelation in faith, which purifies and elevates the natural light of our mind, our own reason is fated to be its undoing. By refusing or abandoning faith, we undermine reason at its foundation. Those who labor to sweep clean the rooms of their minds, thinking to find in scientific and technical prowess a kind of secular salvation, end up verifying the somber words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he speaks of the demon who, finding his old house “empty, swept, and garnished,” takes with him “seven other evil spirits more wicked than himself” and enters in to dwell there.¹ Is this not what we are seeing all around us as our beloved country plummets with accelerating speed into the folly, nay the insanity, of liberalism unbounded, which refuses allegiance even to reason and to nature in its insatiable quest for self without soul, liberty without loyalty?

To the “enlightened” of recent centuries, the Catholic Church was the great enemy of reason, progress, liberty; wrapped in her dark robes of medieval superstition, she sought to enslave men with her dogmas and decrees, despising the goodness of raw nature. From our vantage in the twenty-first century, when for the first time large numbers of people seem incapable of recognizing, much less assenting to, the ironclad results of a valid syllogism or the normalcy of heterosexual love, it is sweetly ironic that the Catholic Tradition is increasingly the only bastion and defender even of nature’s integrity and of the luminosity of reason properly employed. Even while I recognize that rational argument is a dying art with a steadily diminishing potential audience and that the appeal to reason can never be an exclusive means of approach or the last word because, as Pascal observed, “the heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing,” still, I have often thought that our day and age is exactly the right time for a major revival of intelligent apologetics. And, it seems to me, we need to hit the books and begin studying anew the great theological apologists of our incomparable Tradition, both for the deepening of our own faith and for the missionary work Vatican II rightly called each of us to undertake. The stakes are higher than ever: not faith alone, but reason too is besieged. Christian faith is ridiculed as utterly irrational, when in reality, as the best minds have seen for the past 2,000 years, it is supreme and sovereign Reason — God’s Reason. Our own minds can begin to discern this beautiful reasonableness if only we will make the effort. We owe it to our Lord and to ourselves to prize and nurture the gift of reason as we do the gift of faith, so that we can be sane within and talk sanity to a world hell-bent on going mad.

In this article I would like to introduce (or, for some, re-introduce) two towering figures in the history of Catholic theology and apologetics: Saint Anselm and Blaise Pascal—one medieval, one modern, both committed to explaining and defending the mysteries of our holy religion through a judicious use of the God-given gift of reason, always submitting to the primacy of divine revelation and in this way exemplifying what Saint Paul calls the “obedience of faith.”² Unlike Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas, each of whom wrote so much that the official editions of their works run to dozens and dozens of volumes, Anselm and Pascal wrote relatively little; their major religious writings amount to about one modest volume apiece. Since we moderns, surrounded by the constant distraction of emails, cell phones, Twitter, and who knows what else yet to come, simply do not read as much as our forebears (a tragic decline on which the Antichrist is heavily relying in his endgame strategy), this relative brevity is a mercy and an incentive to buy those single volumes and set about reading them. Even so, their works are tough going at times, and perseverance is called for. Those seven demons mentioned by our Lord would, of course, prefer to see the room of your mind “empty, swept, and garnished” with the latest fads and fictions, but you know better than to yield to their desires. In reading Anselm and Pascal (and, needless to say, Augustine, Aquinas, Leo XIII, Benedict XVI, or any Catholic master worth reading), you will furnish your mind with solid truth that no demons, or their unwitting human captives, can gainsay.

The Father of Scholasticism

The future Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), the 900th anniversary of whose death we are celebrating this very year, was born at Aosta in the Italian Alps. As a young man he traveled from place to place for his education, a life of “wandering scholarship” not uncommon in the Middle Ages. In 1060 Anselm became a Benedictine monk at the Norman monastery of Bec, where he was made prior in 1063 and abbot in 1078. From 1063 to 1093 he led the quiet life of a monk and scholar, writing several treatises destined to have a huge impact on the intellectual life of Europe, among them two works on the existence of God (Monologion and Proslogion), a work on truth (De veritate), and another on free will (De libertate arbitrii). In the main Anselm followed Augustine as his master, but he incorporated much from the logic of Boethius and Aristotle as well as from the theology of his monastic predecessors. In 1093 Anselm was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, in spite of his repeated protests against entering the active life, and in his new role he fought a long battle against the liberties taken by English kings in appointing Bishops apart from papal authority. Nevertheless, in the midst of the duties and controversies of his episcopacy Anselm managed to complete his treatise on the Incarnation, Cur Deus homo (Why God became man), along with a number of smaller works. He died in 1109 and was canonized in 1494. In 1720 Pope Clement XI declared him a Doctor of the Church.


Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Although much scholarly discussion has centered around the writings of this brilliant theologian, the central characteristic of his life is often forgotten. Anselm was above all a man of intense prayer who placed his entire intellectual life in the hands of God like a child trusting in his father for guidance. He sought rational or logical arguments not because his mind was clouded with doubts but as a way of using his God-given mind to probe the foundations of the faith he already accepted, and to clarify what our language and concepts mean when adapted to mysteries above the domain of natural reason. The contemporary Catholic apologist should therefore learn his first lesson from Anselm’s very life, which wedded prayer and study, words and silence, wisdom and charity.

Anselm’s most important works, the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the Cur Deus homo, each deserves close study. The relevance of the Proslogion’s ontological argument for the existence of God—namely, that all men are capable of forming the concept “that than which no greater can be thought,” to which existence must belong if it is truly that than which no greater can be thought—is rather limited, for three reasons. First, later Western theologians, among them Saint Thomas Aquinas, found the proof defective. Second, a careful reading of the treatise as a whole shows that Anselm is seeking to deepen his grasp of a truth he already accepts in faith, making the argument a meditative response of reason to God’s self-revelation rather than a proof directed towards unbelievers. Finally, most modern people are not patient or schooled enough to follow Anselm’s abstract reasoning or would be tempted to dismiss it as playing with words. Yet the spirit of the treatise has an abiding relevance, and the prayers it contains help the reader to dwell within the luminous truth of God. Anselm’s Monologion, a profound exploration of the divine nature and the mystery of the Trinity, is more immediately useful to an apologist preparing to present or defend the existence of one God in three divine Persons. Anselm’s dialogue on the fittingness of the Incarnation, Cur Deus homo, contributes to an apologetic tradition stretching back to the earliest Fathers of the Church. The infinite holiness of God deserves perfect honor, but man, by sinning against God, has failed to render this honor; therefore God’s majesty is infinitely offended and man is infinitely guilty. If man is to be rescued from his plight, then this perfect honor must be given by him, canceling out his guilt and restoring his friendship with God; but God alone can restore what man has lost, and God alone can forgive the guilt of an infinite offense. Jesus Christ, Word made flesh, true God and true man, undertakes the work of redemption by offering Himself to the Father in an oblation of love on the Cross for the sake of mankind, an oblation fully acceptable to God because it is made by God; man is redeemed by man, the Father’s wrath is appeased and His mercy poured out, and the path to heaven is opened through Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.

Saint Anselm’s generous and positive attitude towards the integration of faith and reason is much needed now, as the encyclical Fides et Ratio repeatedly emphasized, and his humble way of “questioning God” is a model for the Christian thinker seeking to penetrate the mysteries of faith. Consider these words from chapter 2 of Cur Deus homo: “As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason, so to my mind it appears a neglect if, after we are established in the faith, we do not seek to understand what we believe.”

The Grandeur and Misery of Man

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was unquestionably one of the most eminent modern apologists for the Christian faith. Despite his poor health, Pascal was a prodigy in mathematics and science from his earliest youth. He performed ground-breaking experiments with water and air pressure, invented a calculating machine, and made striking advances in theoretical mathematics, especially probability theory. However, he came to see more and more that burgeoning empirical-mathematical knowledge could not satisfy yearnings for the ultimate meaning of life, nor could its technological counterpart deliver the earthly paradise it promised. Through his keen observations of people and their self-deceiving efforts to escape the unhappiness that lingers beneath the glitter of distracting pleasures, he became acutely aware of man’s radical need for God and the meaninglessness of life without faith. On November 23, 1654, Pascal underwent an intense spiritual experience, during which he wrote down some phrases on a piece of paper he later sewed into his jacket and always wore about with him:

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. God of Jesus Christ. He can only be found in the ways taught in the Gospel. Joy, joy, joy and tears of joy. This is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I have cut myself off from him. I have fled from him, denied him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him. He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.³

After receiving this tremendous grace, he retired into seclusion, placed himself under the direction of spiritual advisors at the Port Royal monastery, and turned his attention to the practice of religion and the composition of apologetic works. The greatest of these is entitled Pensées, a collection of notes for a massive apologetic which Pascal did not live to complete. The notes he preserved, ranging in length from a few words to a few pages, contain some of the most profound insights into the heart of man ever written, and deserve to be read and pondered time and time again. He sketches arguments for the truth of the Christian faith and the divine authority of the Catholic Church from a variety of angles: experience of sin and error in the world, the futility of life without a final purpose, the inability of man to save himself from suffering and death, the incongruity between ideals and facts, proofs of natural reason, the correspondence of Old Testament prophecies to the Messiah who fulfills them, the compelling beauty of Jesus and his Covenant, the miracles performed by Christ and the saints throughout the ages. Warring against the rationalism that was starting to conquer European culture, Pascal emphasizes the primacy of the heart in search for God—that is, the centrality of will, conviction, submission—over cold intellectual arguments. “Reason’s last step is to recognize that there is an infinite number of things which surpass it. It is simply feeble if it does not go as far as realizing that.” “Reason would never submit unless it perceived that there are occasions when it should submit. It is right, therefore, that it should submit when it perceives that it ought to submit.”⁴


Blaise Pascal by Philippe de Champaigne
No apologist has so powerfully insisted on the truth of original sin and, in the face of it, the need for a Redeemer:

If man had never been corrupted, he would enjoy in his innocent state both truth and happiness with confidence. And if man had never been other than corrupted, he would have no notion of either truth or happiness. But in the wretched state in which we are . . . we have an idea of happiness and we cannot achieve it, we feel an image of truth and we possess only untruth. We are incapable both of total ignorance and certain knowledge, so obvious is it that we were once in a state of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.⁵

And again:

Certainly nothing shocks us more deeply than this doctrine [of original sin]. Never­the­less without this most incomprehensible of all mysteries we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Within this gnarled chasm lie the twists and turns of our condition. So, humanity is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is conceivable to humanity.⁶

“Not only is it through Jesus Christ alone that we know God but it is only through Jesus Christ that we know ourselves. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ we do not know what our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves really are.”⁷ In the end, one who wants to be honest with himself must either believe in and submit wholly to God, accepting the Messiah whom the Father sent to redeem mankind, or be an atheist in despair, abandoning the search for truth and happiness, substituting in its place a routine of shallow diversions to mask the emptiness of a life poised for immanent death. “It is good to be weary and tired from the useless search for the true good, in order to stretch ones arms out to the Redeemer.”⁸

The most famous argument in the Pensées has been called Pascal’s Wager. If God exists and the Christian religion is true, then those who believe gain eternal life and those who do not believe earn eternal damnation. Since eternity is infinitely greater than the meager span of one’s life, one ought to wager on the truth of Christianity and embrace it. If it proves to be true, one gains everlasting life. If it proves to be false, then one has merely lost a short life that one had to lose anyhow. But if the religion is true, and one did not embrace it, one has lost infinitely more—one has lost everything. How could an infinitesimal fraction of time have any value in comparison with even the possibility of an eternity of bliss or woe? Here we see Pascal ingeniously using probability theory against the very agnosticism generated by the modern scientific mentality. This argument, like many others in Pascal, was intended to startle and provoke, so that an inquirer after religious truth would search all the more earnestly; it was not intended to be sufficient by itself or to supplant other classical arguments leading in the same direction.

In the later part of his life, Pascal became heatedly involved in political and ecclesiastical controversies surrounding the theology of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), Bishop of Ypres, whose interpretation of Saint Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, grace, and free will formed the basis of a heresy, or at least a heretical tendency, subsequently known as Jansenism. Although Pascal fiercely attacked the Jesuits of his time as traitors to Christianity and may have held some questionable theological positions associated with the Port Royal school, by the end of his life he had withdrawn from public controversy to spend his time in prayer, meditation, and works of charity. In the six-month period of his final prolonged sickness, Pascal sold off his carriage, horses, tapestries, furniture, silver, and most of his books, giving the money to the poor. In spite of his own physical sufferings, he earnestly requested those nursing him to go out and find a poor man who might be sheltered under the same roof with him. He died in peace of soul on August 19, 1662, shortly after receiving the last sacraments.

The Editions to Buy

As mentioned above, the major works by Saint Anselm fit snugly in a single volume. Two affordable paperback editions on the market contain almost exactly the same items in different translations: the Thomas Williams edition published by Hackett and the Brian Davies-Gillian Evans edition published by Oxford. While both translations are reliably faithful to the Latin originals and quite readable, on balance my preference goes to the Davies-Evans, for the simple reason that Williams insists on using inclusive language throughout in a way that uglifies the prose and needlessly complicates the theological points Anselm is making. In keeping with centuries of English usage and just plain good sense, Anselm’s famous question Cur Deus homo deserves to be rendered “Why God became man,” not “Why God became a human being.” Is anyone so witless as to think that “man” in this expression means only males of the species? And, more to the point, if anyone does think it, do they not need a lesson in grammar more than a clunky politically-correct translation?

With Pascal, however, the choices for an English Pensées are more numerous, and I can claim no expertise in recommending the best edition. I have always found the Penguin edition by Krailsheimer serviceable; the language is appropriately eloquent for a master controversialist like Pascal, and the content well-organized.⁹ One could likely find other good translations of this work as well.

A last piece of advice: skip the modern introductions to the volumes and go straight to the author’s own words. Without a doubt some introductions are interesting and helpful, especially for students doing research, but life is short, time is precious, and the wisdom we stand to gain is found in the primary sources, the original writings, of our great Catholic Tradition. Do yourself a favor and make time to read Pascal’s Pensées and, of Anselm’s works, at least Why God Became Man. A noble goal, faith seeking understanding, with two noble guides. May the gracious Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, grant each of us a consoling foretaste of His sovereign Reason as we walk through this vale of tears toward the light of glory.

Notes

1. See Mt 12:43-45. [back]


2. Rom 1:5, 16:26. [back]


3. From Pascal’s “Memorial” of the event. [back]


4. Nos. 220 and 205 in the Penguin edition. [back]


5. No. 164. [back]


6. Ibid. [back]


7. No. 36. [back]


8. No. 524. [back]


9. Recall that Pascal’s original text is, in fact, a huge assembly of scattered notes, which gives rise to disputes about how best to arrange and present the material. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Two Great Apologists for the Catholic Faith," was originally published in Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 6-10, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Substance, Accident, and Transubstantiation

by
Peter A. Kwasniewski


Abraham Bloemaert, Supper at Emmaus

The priest celebrating the traditional Roman Rite whispers in the midst of consecrating the Precious Blood: “mysterium fidei.” Indeed, the Real Presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is among the greatest mysteries of our faith. Over the millennia the Catholic Church has lovingly pondered this mystery, and her great theologians, while humbly acknowledging reason’s limits in probing what is divine and supernatural, have nevertheless been able to offer a reasoned defense of it against all objections that unbelief and heresy have hurled against it. In the modern world, where materialism, scientism, skepticism, and similar views reign supreme, the mysterious change that the Church calls “transubstantiation” has its mockers and would-be debunkers — even, sadly, conscientious or de facto dissenters within the ranks of the Church, such as the modernists who populate many a Catholic university, seminary, or chancery. As Catholics who seek to understand and live our faith more deeply, we need to make an effort to get hold of the common-sense philosophy of reality that provides the Church with the raw materials for her dogmatic definition of transubstantiation. If we do this, we stand a better chance of achieving clear (or in any case, clearer) thinking about this wondrous work of God and thus of being in a position to speak of it to others. In his encyclical Mysterium Fidei (1965), Pope Paul VI said, apropos the Magisterium’s use of philosophically refined language in formulating Eucharistic dogma:

These formulas [of the Council of Trent] — like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith — express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school. Instead they set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it be in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places. (§24)

This article will attempt to show just what the Church’s formulas mean and how the mystery, while never ceasing to be a marvel and a miracle past all human thought, can nonetheless be clarified to the mind so that it no longer seems a colossal contradiction or impossibility. In short, we offer to the reader a modest essay in what the Father of Scholasticism, St. Anselm, called “faith seeking understanding.”

A Short Philosophical Primer

As the distinction between “substance” and “accident” is fundamental to the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation, anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Sacred Mysteries will do well to spend a little time on what exactly these terms refer to.  The following short primer is intended to serve the purpose.

The distinction between substance and accident, in spite of the technical sound of the terms, is founded upon our everyday experience. While modern usage often restricts the meaning of “substance” to elements or chemicals and “accident” to an unintended and usually harmful event, their philosophical meaning is much wider. The word “substance” refers to any individual being, anything that exists in and of itself, e.g., a man, a horse, a plant, a stone, having its own proper nature (in contrast to a bench, for example, which, though it has a definition, does not have its own proper nature but is the result of art putting together different natural substances). The term “substance” derives from its function: it is “that which stands under” (Lt. substantia, Gk. hypostasis), in contrast to the “accidental” (Lt. accidens, Gk. katasymbebekos), “that which befalls, happens to, belongs to” substance. A substance exists in itself as opposed to what exists in a substance. Color, shape, weight, knowledge, virtue, fatherhood, sonship are examples of things that exist in a substance and not in themselves. Color, shape, and weight truly exist, but they exist as belonging to something which is colored, shaped, or heavy. We never see whiteness, but rather, a white horse or a white chair; we never see justice, but rather, a just man or a just law.¹ When we say that someone is six feet tall, we mean that his size is a quantity of his substance; he is six feet tall. Fatherhood is not something that exists apart from someone who is a father; “being a father” belongs to one person in relation to another. Knowledge has existence only in the mind of him who possesses it; it is an accident inhering in his soul.



Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo

Things which are accidents in the soul of a rational creature (such as its knowledge and virtues), are, in God, identical with
His very being.

There are two kinds of accidents: accidents generally so called (non-proper accidents), and proper accidents (“properties”). Non-proper accidents can come to be and pass away in the same substance, as a pale man can become dark by tanning, or an unmusical man can become musical by study, and through lack of practice can lose this knowledge. A proper accident, on the other hand, is rooted in and flows from the very nature of a substance, so that it is always present when the substance is present, e.g., the ability to laugh or the ability to speak, which flow from man’s rational nature. These are called accidents because they only exist in a substance, but they are called properties because they are proper to a certain kind of substance and always accompany it. It would be wrong, therefore, to define accident as that which can either be or not be; some accidents are permanent, others mutable. The important notion in defining accident is that it exists in, or inheres in, an underlying subject. (The single exception is the mystery of the Eucharist, where, by divine power, the accidents of bread and wine exist without an underlying subject, as we shall discuss below.) Accidents are thus always distinct from substance, which is their source of being. If there were no rational animal, there would be no foundation for the properties of speech and laughter or the accidents of tall, brave, musical, etc.²

Because we gain our knowledge of reality through our senses, we can directly perceive only the accidental features of things. Nevertheless, the existence of substance is readily inferred from our experience of individual beings (this man, this horse) and from the impossibility of an abstract quality (whiteness, musicality, justice, six-footedness) existing apart from a subject or individual modified by it. The accidents we perceive point to a more fundamental level of being which enables them to exist. A person can change color or height, can acquire or lose virtue, without ceasing to be the same person; substance is the permanent principle underlying all other characteristics. This leads us to a broader meaning of substance: that which truly is, the essential foundation, as opposed to what is mutable or derivative. In this sense the very nature or essence of a thing is sometimes called its substance, because the nature or essence is that which makes a thing to be what it is; and by extension, the being of a thing can be called substance. When “substance” is used in these extended senses, it no longer signifies a counterpart to or foundation of accidents; hence when God is called a substance, or the Persons of the Trinity are referred to as hypostases, or when we speak of the hypostatic union of the human and divine natures in Jesus Christ, we do not imply that there are corresponding accidents inhering in the being of God or the Word. Things which are accidents in the soul of a rational creature (such as its knowledge and virtues) are, in God, identical with His very being.

The term “substance” entered into Christian theology very early on, in controversies surrounding the Incarnation and the Blessed Trinity. The Council of Nicea (325), defending the divinity of Christ, speaks of the Son as homoousian (Lt. consubstantialis), that is, of the same substance, the same divine essence, against the Arians who called Him homoiousian, “of a like substance.”³ In the Middle Ages, when the mystery of the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood of Christ was challenged by Berengarius of Tours, the vocabulary of substance and accident was employed to formulate the orthodox teaching.

The Miracle of Transubstantiation

As the central mystery of our faith, “the source and summit of the Christian life,” the Holy Eucharist is the object of the Church’s most profound adoration and most rigorous vigilance.⁴ To understand why the Church uses the term “transubstantiation” for the miracle that occurs at the moment of consecration, two truths are presupposed: first, that the Eucharist really is the Body and Blood of Christ, and second, as a necessary counterpart, that bread and wine really change into the Body and Blood. Both truths are taught in Scripture⁵ and unequivocally attested to by the Eastern and Western Fathers of the Church. Greek authors refer to the change that takes place in the gifts as a metousiosis or change of one being (ousia) into another; to this day, Eastern Orthodox theologians who remain faithful to the Patristic heritage are fundamentally in agreement with Catholic dogma, even if they use a different and less precise terminology.⁶ The Latin term transubstantiatio appeared in the late 11th century and was set forth authoritatively at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Opposing the Eucharistic heresies of the self-styled Reformers, the Council of Trent (1545–63) solemnly restated the doctrine, noting that its meaning, if not the special term, has been the common faith of the Church always and everywhere.

One must marvel at the beautiful fittingness of the means chosen by our Lord: bread and wine are evident sources of nourishment for the body, thus perfectly symbolizing the spiritual nourishment the soul receives in Holy Communion.

The substance of a thing is what it most fundamentally is as a certain kind of thing (e.g., bread is a product of baked flour, oil, salt, etc.), as distinguished from its various accidents or characteristics (color, taste, smell, shape, size, location, and the like).⁷ Normally, the accidents of a thing indicate its substance; the color and taste of bread lead us to make the unsurprising inference that it is bread. Transubstantiation is rightly called miraculous, that is, altogether outside of the ordinary course of nature, because in this mysterious conversion the accidents or characteristics of bread and wine continue to remain while the inner substance, the essential reality, comes to be entirely different. As the Council of Trent teaches, at the moment of consecration, in virtue of the efficacious words of our Lord uttered by His minister, the entire substance of bread is changed into the entire substance of the Body of Christ and the entire substance of wine is changed into the entire substance of the Blood of Christ. Bread and wine as such cease to exist and the full reality of Christ comes to be present under their appearances, which by remaining permit us to consume the divine gifts. The accidents of bread and wine thus remain without any substance in which they inhere, and the substance of Jesus Christ becomes present without any of His sensible accidents or characteristics. One must marvel at the beautiful fittingness of the means chosen by our Lord: bread and wine are evident sources of nourishment for the body, thus perfectly symbolizing the spiritual nourishment the soul receives in Holy Communion, and the lingering accidents of these foods permit the communicant to receive the true flesh and blood of the Lord, and thus His soul and divinity, unbloodily, in a manner well suited to us and our powers. When we receive Holy Communion, the Lord of heaven and earth comes to dwell within us in the most intimate way, blessing our souls and bodies with the infinite holiness of His divinized humanity. While the human body transforms ordinary food into its own substance, in receiving Christ worthily it is we who, bathed in His grace, are transformed by degree into His image and likeness.

Transubstantiation is rightly called miraculous, that is, altogether outside of the ordinary course of nature, because in this mysterious conversion the accidents or characteristics of bread and wine continue to remain while the inner substance, the essential reality, comes to be entirely different.

Because through the words of consecration the Body and Blood of Our Lord come to be present in all their truth, as the living flesh and blood of the risen Lord in heaven, the consecrated host necessarily also contains — “by concomitance,” to use the language of Saint Thomas and the Council of Trent — His Blood, Soul, and Divinity, for the latter are inseparable from the former.⁸ They always accompany the Body (the verb concomitare simply meaning to attend, accompany, go along with). The same is true in regard to the wine, which is made the Blood of Christ by virtue of the words of consecration, but in which is present by concomitance the Savior’s Body, Soul, and Divinity. This is the reason why reception under one species, whether that of bread or that of wine, does not in any way lessen one’s reception of the whole Christ, the Word made flesh, even if the signification or sign-value of the sacrament is more fully acknowledged and embraced by reception under both species, as befits above all the priest who offers the sacrifice.

Objections and Replies

Some have objected that the use of “substance and accident” in defining the mystery of the Eucharist makes an illegitimate use of pagan philosophical categories which are not revealed in Scripture or found explicitly prior to the scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages. In her efforts to defend this holiest of mysteries, the Church, so it is said, tied herself to debatable human distinctions instead of remaining content with a simple act of faith in the Presence of Christ. One might initially reply that the terms Incarnation and Trinity are also not mentioned in Scripture, but are no less true on that account. But more to the point, this objection fails to see that the distinction between substance and accident is firmly rooted in common experience and the very structure of reality. The Church uses philosophical terminology whenever it captures some undeniable truth about the world we live in or the faith we profess. Even if the Church does not enjoin Aristotelian physics per se, she perceives that the mystery of the Eucharist can be correctly defined in terms originally introduced by Aristotle. Although she encourages further theological reflection on the sacred mysteries, the Church has solemnly defined that the wondrous and singular change occurring at the moment of consecration is most appropriately and correctly called transubstantiation. Responding to the Synod of Pistoia (1786) which held that the theory of transubstantiation is a “purely scholastic question,” Pope Pius VI reaffirmed to the contrary that all of the faithful should be instructed in it. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Mysterium Fidei (1965) issued a stern warning against devaluing or replacing the term “transubstantiation,” condemning in particular two innovations, “transfinalization” (namely, that the words of consecration change the finality or purpose of the bread and wine, which then serve the function of stimulating faith in Christ’s love) and “transignification” (that the words of consecration change the meaning of the bread and wine, which thus acquire a symbolic significance lacking in ordinary human food). Such theories hearken back to the errors of Protestant Reformers who either denied the actual conversion of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and consequently rejected the Real Presence, or denied the total conversion of the gifts, insisting that after consecration the bread and wine continue to remain, together with or alongside of the newly-present Body and Blood (a theory known as consubstantiation). It was precisely such heresies that the Council of Trent anathematized in order to safeguard the profoundest mystery of divine love. When she rejects consubstantiation, moreover, the Church is in fact upholding reason; for to say that the very same thing is both the entire substance of Christ and the entire substance of bread is a contradiction in terms, a metaphysical impossibility.

When she rejects consubstantiation, moreover, the Church is in fact upholding reason; for to say that the very same thing is both the entire substance of Christ and the entire substance of bread is a contradiction in terms, a metaphysical impossibility.

Catholics should be aware of other objections that may be directed against the mystery of transubstantiation. First, it might be thought that God is “deceiving” us if Jesus Christ is truly present but cannot be perceived in any way as present; why would the Savior choose to give Himself to us under different and misleading appearances? The practical answer is that, granting our Lord’s intention to nourish us with Himself, we could not eat His Body and drink His Blood in a dignified way unless it were made available after the manner of ordinary food and drink. But the deeper answer is that the Eucharist, as the supreme mystery of faith, beckons us to place our entire trust in the infallible word of God, the God of mercy who condescended to enter the world as a helpless infant whose divinity could not be recognized by human senses (John 1:9-13, Matthew 16:17). The hidden presence of Christ upon the altar is at once the greatest mercy to sinners (Matthew 26:28) and the greatest challenge to disciples, who must discern Christ in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35) or they shall find Him nowhere, even were He to appear and walk alongside them. If we must exercise the supernatural virtue of faith to accept all the mysteries of our holy religion — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the resurrection — we must exercise this virtue above all when worshiping and approaching the God hidden under the humble appearances of the consecrated gifts. Our Lord said to Thomas: “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe” that I am truly risen from the dead (John 20:29); to us at every Mass He says: “Blessed are you who do not see and yet believe” that I am truly here, in your midst, fulfilling my promise to be “with you always even to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20).

A philosophically-minded person could object that a substance cannot change without its accidents or appearances also changing; thus if bread and wine cease to be, their appearance must also cease, and if Jesus comes to be present, His appearance must also come to be present. In replying, one should note that God is able, in His omnipotence, to cause a substance to exist by itself without its usual sensible characteristics, and to sustain accidents in being apart from their customary subject, because He is the first and absolute cause of all being — the being of substances as well as of their accidents — and whatever is the first and absolute cause of a composite is also the cause of its aspects or components taken one by one. Thus the Creator who causes both iron and its accidents (shiny surface, hardness, durability) to exist and remain in existence, can, if He chooses, cause the characteristics of iron to remain while withdrawing the substance underlying them. That He can do so should not be difficult to accept when we consider that God, in creating the world, the angels, and each human soul, brings forth being out of nothing (ex nihilo) — an act which surpasses every miracle. The objection is valid only so far as our common experience goes, for the Eucharist is an absolute exception. With all other beings it is true that substance and accidents always go together, but in the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament God has willed that they remain separate by an act of His indomitable power.

Related to this objection is another: how can the Body of Christ be in more than one place at a time? Would not Christ be impossibly multiplied in the many hosts? In response: only the accidents of bread and wine are divided up and distributed, and only the accidents can perish with time, as they do in the stomach of the recipient; the glorified Savior in heaven, without suffering division, makes Himself wholly present in the Eucharist, which is truly one because its substance is truly one. St. Paul’s teaching — “The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the Body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17) — shows that one and the same Bread of Life, Jesus Himself (John 6:35), is received by Christians under the appearances of that physical bread which can be broken up and given out. Though the comparison limps, even a mere man can be present at the same time in different places according to different modes: on a telephone conference call, a speaker is present to himself in one way and present to the others in another way, without ceasing to be the same man. In the Holy Eucharist, our Lord is present in a sacramental mode which permits of multipresence or multilocation.


The Nativity by John Singleton Copley

The Eucharist, as the supreme mystery of faith, beckons us to place our entire trust in the infallible word of God, the God of mercy who condescended to enter the world as a helpless infant whose divinity could not be recognized by human senses.
Finally, some people think that the doctrine of transubstantiation is made untenable by “modern science.” The empirical sciences of recent centuries, however, have done no more than provide a vast amount of detailed information and numerous interesting theories about the very same world in which the ancients and medievals lived, the same world all of us live in and experience. There can never be any reasonable dispute about the normal sequence of events and the ordinary constitution of substances in the natural world. Just as the believer who eats the host tastes bread but knows by faith that he receives Jesus Christ, chemical analysis performed on a consecrated host (God forbid) would obviously indicate the accidental features of bread — just as the believer has always known. Neither the five senses of man nor the most advanced instruments of empirical science can reach into the inward substance of things; all they can know and register are the accidents, the appearances, the qualities and quantities, which, in the Eucharist, remain what they were before transubstantiation. The hostility that a modern empiricist might aim at the Eucharist is rooted in a prior axiomatic rejection of the existence of God or of the very possibility of miracles, i.e., events outside the ordinary “law-abiding” course of nature. These are errors to be engaged on a larger battlefield. Once the existence of God and the infinite perfections of His nature are demonstrated, it becomes impossible to deny the possibility of miracles, since the God who creates and sustains all things can do as He wishes with them; and because Jesus Christ is true God, it immediately follows that He can perform the miracle of transubstantiation by the infinite power of His divinity, a power to which the priest is given special access through his sacramental conformity to Christ the High Priest.

Notes

1. An idiom like "Will we ever see justice?" means: Will we see the just thing done in this situation? [back]


2. There are also two levels of substance. Primary substance is what we have been speaking of, the individual existing thing, this particular man or horse or tree. Secondary substance refers to the genus or species of an individual. "Animal" or "plant" may be called substance, but since there are only individual animals and plants in the world, substance most properly refers to actually existing things rather than their species or genera. [back]


3. The expression "It doesn't matter one iota" is a rationalist snub against the theological precision of our forefathers. One iota makes all the difference between Christianity and the dressed-up paganism of Arius. [back]


4. See Lumen Gentium 11, Catechism of the Catholic Church 1324. That this adoration and vigilance have often been lacking, especially in recent decades, can hardly be blamed on official teaching. It results more from the decay in authority, the lack of effective discipline, and the gradual loss of a sense of Tradition among the faithful, as documented in Romano Amerio's Iota Unum [back]


5. See, inter alia, John 6:48-60; Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, 11:23-29. [back]


6. They see their linguistic reserve as a great virtue, of course, but this is no place to enter into a debate about why they are mistaken. [back]


7. While bread is not a substance produced by nature but rather a mixture of natural ingredients brought together by man and subjected to heating, the end result is not a mere conglomeration of ingredients, unless the baking has been quite unsuccessful; it is a constantly recognizable something to which we have no difficulty assigning a single name. [back]


8. Inseparable now that Christ is risen and death holds no dominion over Him. The humanity we receive in the Eucharist is risen, glorified, whole and imperishable. When Jesus first celebrated the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, the humanity received by the disciples was passible (able to suffer). Saint Thomas goes so far as to say that if the Eucharist had been offered during the interval between Christ's death and resurrection, the host would have contained the Body with the Divinity but without the Blood or the Soul, and the chalice would have contained the Blood with the Divinity but without the Body or the Soul. All this is simply the rigorous application of the principle that the Eucharist contains the substance of Christ as He is. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Substance, Accident, and Transubstantiation," was originally published in Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vo. 18, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 8-13, and is reprinted here by permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Dignitatis Humanae

The Interpretive Principles

by Peter A. Kwasniewski


In the history of the Church no magisterial document has generated as much controversy and contradiction among its interpreters as the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae. By some it has been exalted as the Council's choicest fruit, by others contemned as a flagrant departure from preconciliar teaching. It has been reviewed, analyzed, critiqued, and defended in countless books and articles.

What business is it of mine, then, to dare to add another essay to this ever-growing pile? The answer is this. Most treatments begin from such an entrenched predisposition of favoritism or antagonism that they fail to come to grips with perennially valid interpretive or hermeneutical principles that a reader must bring to the document if it to be read as a magisterial text, that is, one that must be in harmony with the Catholic tradition rather than in opposition to it (whether the rupture be rejoiced in or lamented). Put differently, what is lacking is a clear introduction to the method of interpretation of this conciliar document. My goal, therefore, is both modest and ambitious. I do not attempt a detailed interpretation; thus for modesty. But I do offer a perspective according to which Dignitatis Humanae can, without intellectual contortions, be seen by anyone as a logical extension of the preconciliar Magisterium on the question of a man's right to pursue the truth in freedom; thus for ambition.

Preambles to magisterial interpretation

We must begin with certain preambles without which any attempt to understand an ecclesiastical document will falter.

1. The fundamental principle of all magisterial interpretation, especially when it comes to the Second Vatican Council, is what Pope Benedict has called a "hermeneutic of continuity," in contrast to a "hermeneutic of rupture."¹ One always grants the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, to any substantive doctrinal assertion in a document that is promulgated by legitimate authority -- that is, one presumes its continuity with the preceding tradition even where this is not apparent, or where the opposite seems apparent. One then endeavors to understand the later teaching in continuity with preceding tradition, as part of a larger tradition that encompasses it, and in light of analogous, parallel, or subsequent texts which flesh out the meaning. No text is to be read in a vacuum, since there is a tradition that serves as context; no merely circumstantial evidence (e.g., what so-and-so, when interviewed, says is the meaning of a certain statement) is to be taken as definitive; preference is given to clearer authoritative expressions of doctrine, earlier or later.

2. The Church, in the person of her legitimate pastors, is the living agent of interpreting her own Magisterium. There is no detached, "scientific" perspective outside of her, on the basis of which the Magisterium can be determined apart from its own self-elucidation. However, as Pope Benedict has also stressed, the Church is a servant of revelation and in no way its author of final measure; the Holy Spirit abiding in the Church is the font of all authentic interpretation. This opens up the real possibility of greater or lesser fidelity, clarity, and competence on the part of pastors, even the Supreme Pastor. While error in faith and morals is categorically excluded, no such guarantee of Divine assistance extends to inappropriate silence or omission, ambiguity or vagueness, insufficient elaboration, and so forth. Because the Church's understanding of her teaching is always expressed at the specific historical moments with specific intellectual resources, an ongoing process of reflection and clarification will be desirable, even unavoidable. Finally, as we known, individual Bishops can falter and require correction -- and even the Pope, in regard to prudential applications or personal opinions.²

3. While it does not address every difficulty that interpreters have raised in connection with Dignitatis Humanae, the Catechism of the Catholic Church contains a number of crucial clarifications manifestly intended to banish unacceptable postconciliar appropriations of the teachings of Dignitatis Humanae, for example those that skew it in the direction of legal positivism.³ For his part, John Paul II left a rich body of teaching on the intrinsic connection between freedom and truth, which is the key to unlocking the deepest intention of Dignitatis Humanae. Without this key, its is a document that must remain a closed door -- or worse, a door that leads into another world than that of unanimous Catholic teaching prior to 1965.⁴

Preambles to Dignitatis Humanae

1. By its own admission, Dignitatis Humanae does not intend to address every aspect of the problem of religious liberty.
Russell Hittinger has often drawn attention to two facts: the geopolitical situation at the time of Dignitatis Humanae, with the still-fresh memory of the towering totalitarianisms of the Second World War as well as the ever-present threat of militant atheistic Communism, and the document's deliberate silence regarding the thesis-hypothesis debate (the "thesis" being that the Catholic Church, as the embodiment of the one true religion, must be the approved public religion of the State; the "hypothesis," that the evil of non-establishment or of pluralism could be tolerated to avoid a greater evil such as civic unrest).⁵ In that sense, Dignitatis Humanae is not first and foremost an abstract or theoretical treatment but a practical assessment of and approach to a current world situation, in which the Church is often persecuted and denied her legitimate freedom. Although it expresses general principles that are always valid, it does not take up some of the more complex questions as to diverse ways in which these principles could or should be realized in particular situations.

The immediate background in the 1960s is, of course, the de facto triumph of "liberal" democracies in one part of the world, and the ominous threat of their militant opponents, the Marxist-communist "people's republics." In this scenario, the points made by Pope Pius XII in his 1953 address Ci Riesce to the National Convention of Italian Catholic Jurists stand out all the more boldly: in some historical situations, the best -- in the sense of most prudent -- policy can be one of a broad toleration of religious half-truths and errors. But Pius XII insisted on an essential condition, as did Leo XIII: such toleration can only be justified by the general well-being of society, its common good, which may suffer more from attempts at suppression.⁶ The controversy over Dignitatis Humanae is largely a controversy over whether it is ever legitimate, in principle, for a government to oppose, prohibit, or prosecute religious errors. We shall return to this point.

2. At the insistence of Pope Paul VI, the final version of Dignitatis Humanae includes, near the beginning, the following unambiguous statement, intended as a hermeneutical principle for the remainder of the document: "Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore, it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.⁷ While the conciliar text does not expand upon or explain this affirmation, much less attempt to resolve apparent contradictions between it and other statements that follow in the document, the statement nevertheless makes it plain that however those other statements are to be interpreted, neither they nor the document as a whole may be interpreted in contradiction to the constant teaching of the preconciliar Roman Pontiffs, above all Leo XIII.⁸

General points on the "right to religious liberty"

According to unanimous papal teaching, no right of an individual is absolute and unconstrained; the natural moral law, as well as the Divine law, is always the measure of human actions and of the exercise of any right. In Pope John XXIII's formulation of this truth, man "has a right to freedom in investigating the truth, and -- within the limits of the moral order and the common good -- to freedom of speech and publication, and to freedom to pursue whatever profession he may choose."⁹ A right is understood as a "moral power," that is, a power, rooted in reason and free will, to pursue the good according to a well-formed conscience. Again John XXIII speaks to the point:

Also among man's rights is that of being able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of his own conscience, and to profess his religion both in private and in public. According to the clear teaching of Lactantius, "this is the very condition of our birth, that we render to the God who made us that just homage which is His due; that we acknowledge Him alone as God, and follow Him. It is from this ligature of piety, which binds us and joins us to God, that religion derives its name."¹⁰

Accordingly, the right to religious freedom is nothing other than the right to pursue the truth about God and man without external interference or coercion. Hence, the freedom in question is a freedom from coercion, not a freedom from any social regulation whatsoever, much less a freedom of total indifference toward truth. The explanation just given is exactly what one finds in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In itself, the human will cannot be coerced, precisely because it is free by its very nature; it is a first cause of action within the human soul. It can, of course, be moved by God, the creator of man and all his powers, and such an internal motion is not only not contrary to the will's nature but most deeply in accord with it -- in fact, liberating, for grace heals and elevated the human will wounded and bent low by sin. Thus, metaphysically speaking it is not possible to coerce the will. For this reason, it is also not possible for any government to control what a man is thinking, what he thinks to be true, his search for truth, his silent prayer -- anything that takes place within his soul.

Attempts can be made and have always been made, however, to regulate the exercise of liberty as regards its outward manifestations, its social or public expression. It is necessary also to make a distinction between actions that are domestic (within the family circle) and actions that are civic or public, that is, open to a wider circle. The distinction is not always easy to make, but it has evident consequences for the understanding of law. Legal regulations governing the outward actions of men -- their speech and publications, their worship and works of art, and so forth -- are not only not contrary to human dignity, but are demanded by the very goods that civil society is designed to promote, such as order, peace, and justice. Put differently, it is never the case that men are, or should be left free to do or say absolutely anything at any time and in any place. On the contrary, the social exercise of free will is limited by the society's common good -- the good that pertains to and redounds to each and every member of that society. Thus John XXIII insists in Pacem in Terris that for every right there is a corresponding obligation or duty both to use the right well and to respect the rights of others. The right is bound internally by its purpose and externally but the freedom that must be guaranteed to others who are also pursuing legitimate ends:

The natural rights of which We have so far been speaking are inextricably bound up with as many duties, all applying to one and the same person. These rights and duties derive their origin, their sustenance, and their indestructibility from the natural law, which in conferring the one imposes the other. Thus, for example, the right to live involves the duty to preserve one's life; the right to a decent standard of living, the duty to live in a becoming fashion; the right to be free to seek out the truth, the duty to devote oneself to an ever deeper and wider search for it.¹¹

Shortly after this passage John XXIII extends his analysis to interpersonal relations: "Once this is admitted, it follows that in human society one man's natural right gives rise to a corresponding duty in other men; the duty, that is, of recognizing and respecting that right."¹² He draws the following conclusion: "Since men are social by nature [natura congregabiles], it is necessary for them to live together and to seek one another's good [alii aliorum quaerant bonum]. That men should recognize and perform their respective rights and duties is imperative to a well-ordered society."¹³ From this perspective, then, the question is not so much whether laws can be made to govern public actions, but which and what kind of laws are best in any given set of circumstances. The question of limits to the outward or public exercise of rights is always a question of the prudential order, and never a purely theoretical question.

If freedom, properly understood, is not mere freedom from constraint but freedom to embrace the good and the true, then free human actions can be either in accord with the good and the true, or directly opposed to them in varying ways. Prior to the invention of supposedly moral neutral political philosophies in the modern period, civil law -- together with its means of implementation, such as courts and punishments -- had always been understood as an instrument admittedly limited, by which at least the worst excesses of liberty against the moral law could be restrained and at the same time dispositions favoring virtuous actions could be formed in the citizens, so that they would be responsible members of society who actively contribute to its common good. This remains the Church's understanding of civil law, which is nothing other than a concrete specification of precepts of the natural law; for us there can be no morally neutral political philosophy or system of government.

A correct frame of interpretation

These things being premised, we are now in a position to see why John Paul II's constant teaching on the indissoluble link between freedom and truth is the key to a correct and consistent understanding of religious liberty. The only reason freedom is a good thing is that it is ordered to, and capable of attaining, truth. Freedom is only as worthwhile as its achievement of the goal. Thus, men are always and everywhere to be allowed the freedom -- to do what? To seek out and adhere to the truth. Why does Jesus say those sobering words about Judas, that "it would have been better for that man if he had not been born" (Mt 26:24)? Because Judas had received from God the gift of freedom but had then abused it radically, so that ultimately he gained nothing, indeed lost the very beatitude that is man's gained nothing, indeed lost the very beatitude that is man's end. Freedom is not a self-justifying, self-fulfilling good; it is, through and through, a power of seeking and adhering to the beloved. It is a noble power because, unlike a heavy object's falling without knowledge or spontaneity to a center of gravity, freedom implies the consciousness and movement from within or "motivation" of the one who is seeking and adhering.

The teaching that error has no rights remains untouched; one finds it not only in Leo XIII's social encyclicals but also in Pius XII's Ci Riesce and in John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae. But the Church adds (and this is a central point in Dignitatis Humanae): Although error as such has no rights, the erring person does have rights, and his errors do not strip away those rights.¹⁴ The reason is that the erring person is, as a human person equipped with intellect and free will, naturally ordered to the truth by his conscience and by the author of his nature; no external agent can force him either to reach that truth or to renounce his errors, although certain errors may be judged sufficiently harmful to the common good that the expression and inculcation of these errors may be lawfully prohibited. Any attempt to force the recognition of revealed truth or the internal renunciation of religious error is contrary to human dignity as such, for man can only adhere to truth or renounce error from within. Note well that this statement is not incompatible with the efforts of civil power -- efforts always necessary -- to impose just limits on the way in which the right to search for the truth (as with any right to act publicly) is exercised, as well as on the public manifestations of the truth people believe they have found. On these points, the unsurpassed magisterial treatment remains that of Pius XII's Ci Riesce.

Catholic social teaching fundamentally repudiates the secularism according to which the State has no responsibility for the moral and religious formation of its citizens, even as the same teaching rejects the totalitarianism that sets up the State as final arbiter of moral and religious truth. This arbiter remains the Catholic Church (Dignitatis Humanae does not shy away from making strong statements to that effect), to which the State owes at least full freedom of action.¹⁵ Human governance, for its part, can indeed make it easier to attain the truth and easier to avoid error. For example, the State must do all it can to promote healthy family life and prohibit practices or vices that undermine it, such as fornication, polygamy, divorce, contraception, in vitro fertalization, abortion, and sodomy. All of this pertains to the natural law, which, on the one hand, it is the State's proper responsibility to uphold and promote, and which, on the other hand, it is the Church's province to interpret and clarify in accord with the full truth about man. Pace Justice Scalia, the role of civil authority and jurisprudence is ineluctably bound up with interpreting and appling the precepts of natural law; it is precisely these precepts that justify or even require that limitations be placed on the public exercise of human freedom. The Church has never adopted the enlightenment ideology of absolute rights -- rights that are foundationless, unrestrainable, autonomous. Instead, in Dignitatis Humanae itself, not to mention a host of other documents, she indicates that rights are correlative with duties and that no rights can be absolute but all are subject to the measure of the common good.¹⁶

Sources for a better understanding

When all is said and done, Dignitatis Humanae remains a problematic document if only because its own scope and method are left unclear to the reader and, as a result, its interpretation has been terribly, but predictably, vexed. It has given rise to acrimonious debate, intense partisanship, and even to real or emergent schism: leaders of the Society of Saint Pius X have pointed above all to Dignitatis Humanae as undeniable proof of the doctrinal discontinuity that justifies skepticism about the Second Vatican Council. It little helps most of us who are neither proficient in French nor have leisure for vast amounts of reading that a learned monk of the traditional Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, Dom Basile Valuet, O.S.B., has published a 3,000-page definitive study of Dignitatis Humanae, responding to both Lefebrvist and liberal/modernist interpretations by documenting and defending the doctrinal continuity of Dignitatis Humanae with the entire preceding Catholic tradition. It is true that Dom Basile prepared a one-volume synopsis, which he personally told me he wishes to see translated into other languages than French, but to my knowledge, an English edition has not yet appeared.

Still, there are many good readings that shed light on the quetion of the interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae. I highly recommend the following.

1. Thomas Storck has taken up the Dignitatis Humanae question three times: first, with an article in Faith & Reason, then with an article in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, and most recently with a chapter and appendix in his book Foundations of a Catholic Political Order.¹⁷ This last treatment is the best short treatment I know of.

2. For historical background and common sense textual analysis, see Russell Hittinger's "Dignitatis Humanae, Religious Liberty, and Ecclesiastical Self-Government," a chapter in his book The First Grace (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003). Related articles by the same author are "What Kind of Caesar?"; "The Pope and the Liberal State"; and "Making Sense of the Civilization of Love: John Paul II's Contribution to Catholic Social Thought."¹⁸ Although I am not completely convinced by some of Hittinger's arguments, I find his approach refreshingly uncluttered and certainly much better than interpretations that do not pay sufficient attention to historical context.

3. A goldmine of background and documentary information is contained in Michael Davies' The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty.¹⁹ Davies' approach is handicapped by methodological flaws that make it impossible for him to avoid drawing an unacceptable conclusion, namely, that Dignitatis Humanae fundamentally conflicts with the prior Magisterium of the Church. A review by Father Brian Harrison, O.P., exposes these flaws quite clearly, while praising aspects of Davies' work in other respects.²⁰

4. It is important to aquire a good grasp of the nineteenth-century historical situation and the way in which the papal teaching on State and society was precipitated and influenced by the fierce battle waged against the Church by rampant liberalism. Again, while not endorsing all their views, I recommend E.E.Y. Hales' Pio Nono, especially the chapter on the Syllabus of Errors,²¹ and Canon Roger Aubert's essay, "Religious Liberty from Mirari Vos to the Syllabus."²²

At the Second Vatican Council, the idea of a state that aimed to give public honor to God by privileging the Catholic religion was called into question. Some were saying: "We can't retain a double-faced policy (thesis/hypothesis) such that, if you are in power, you must grant freedom to us, but if we're in power, we don't need to grant freedom to you. How illogical!" In truth, this is no counter-argument at all; it is symptomatic, rather, of a sociologically eviscerated notion of "religion" that fails to give due primacy to the fullness of truth revealed by God and entrusted to the Catholic Church. Of course the Church has unique rights over civil society, even as she has a unique right to interpret the natural law without error. She is unique, period. The Catholic Faith is not one religion among many but the one true religion, of which all others (excepting, in a certain sense, the Jewish religion) are partial and groping images that arise principally from man and are inherently non-salvific. Hence a common political theory of the relationship between religion and civil society -- one that would take in the Catholic religion on equal terms with all other religions and treat them as if politically indistinguishable -- is impossible in principle, and so cannot be applied in practice.

In the end, there are two mutually exclusive political paradigms and paths, one of which must be taken while the other is left behind: Leonine Thomism and Lockean-Murrayite secularism. According to the first, the civil and ecclesiastical or kingly and sacerdotal powers are intended by God, their Creator and Redeemer, to stand in the correct hierarchical relationship, so much so that the very well-being of society and of culture depends intimately on the concrete realization of this relationship; according to the second, the two powers have no formal relationship at all, at best a tenuous material one. The contrast is like that between a marriage intended and sanctified by God, open to the gift of new life in the synergetic activity of procreation, and a couple without vows, living together for mutual convenience. In spite of superficial similarities, which may even include offspring, these avenues tend to go in opposite directions and, barring perversion or conversion, will end in opposite destinies.

Image Credits

• Vatican II, from Australian EJournal of Theology, August, 2003.
• Fathers of the Latin Church by Abraham Bloemaert
• The Cardinal in His Study by Giovanni Paolo Bedini

Notes

1. From the Holy Father's address to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005. [back]


2. A well-known example of a false papal opinion was Pope John XXII's view, expressed in a sermon, that the righteous dead would not behold God until after the Last Judgment -- a view he later retracted. His successor Benedict XII solemnly defined the Church's teaching on this matter in 1336. It is, of course, important to distinguish between magisterial and non-magisterial statements of our pastors, since they are still legitimate pastors even when they do (as John XXII did) speak erroneously. [back]


3. See the Catechism, esp. 2104-9 (2109 specifically excludes conceiving of "public order" in a "positivist or naturalist manner") and 2136, but also 1731-33, 1738, 1747, 1782, 1884, 1887-88, 1898, 1907-12, 1925, 1930, 2084, 2235, 2244-46, and 2257. [back]


4. DH is a document misread by many not only because they have little familiarity with magisterial documents preceding it but also because they do not understand the canons of interpretation. The main canon is this: anything that has been repeatedly taught by the popes at a high level of authority and as pertaining to the essence of the Faith cannot, in principle, be contradicted by any later pronouncement. As one can see from reading Immortale Dei or Libertas Praestantissimum (an encyclical to which John Paul II was particularly fond of drawing attention), Leo XIII's main conclusions are presented not as prudential judgments but as timeless truths flowing from revelation and from first principles of reason. It is impossible that the Magisterium teach that the Catholic Church or the Catholic religion ought to be treated in exactly the same way as other religious bodies or opinions and that civil authorities/regimes have no positive responsibilities toward the one true religion. Indeed, Paul VI's crucial addition to the final draft of DH (discussed below) had no other purpose than to remind the reader of this point. [back]


5. I am speaking of a state that is predominantly Catholic in its population and rulers. Some have objected to this line of argument by saying that "the state is not competent to judge about religion." True but irrelevant. When Catholics who are competent to judge about religion form the majority, obviously -- if they really believe in Christ as king and savior of men and of societies -- they will desire to form a Catholic state. Consequently, it is not the state per se that makes the judgment, but Catholics who already know that theirs is the true religion. [back]


6. Recall that for Leo XIII, an increasing toleration of evils -- an increasing "liberalization" of society -- is a sign of weakness and imperfection of its government and its populace (Libertas Praestantissimum 33-35). [back]


7. Fourth paragraph of section 1. [back]


8. This is Thomas Storck's point of departure in the treatment given in Foundations of a Catholic Political Order (Beltsville, Maryland: Four Faces Press, 1998) as well as in his other publications on DH. [back]


9. Pacem in Terris 12. [back]


10. Pacem in Terris 14. Implied in the phrase "right dictates of conscience" is that the worship be given according to objectively true criteria, not merely what seems true to this or that person. Inevitably, a state will have to tolerate a certain amount of error in order to leave people sufficiently free to discover truth if they have not already found it. [back]


11. Pacem in Terris 28-29. [back]


12. Pacem in Terris 30. [back]


13. Pacem in Terris 31. [back]


14. See John XXIII, Pacem in Terris 157-60; John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, passim, esp. 32-35, 42, 61-64, 84, 93, 95=97, 104; Evangelium Vitae, passim esp. 18, 19, 24, 70-72; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life. [back]


15. See, inter alia, DH Introduction and 14. In the former place we read: "God Himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve Him, and thus be saved in Christ and come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church." In the latter place: "the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself." [back]


16. People have sometimes argued that DH replaced the old standard of "common good" with a new, positivistic standard of "public order." Apart from the salient fact that DH 7 does invoke the common good and the "objective moral order," such an interpretation is in any case expressly ruled out by the Catechism (see note 3 above). [back]


17. The first is available at http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/FR89103.HTM; the second used to be available but the link perished, while the third is out of print. There is a high likelihood that Foundations, which is quite simply essential reading for all who are eager to understand Catholic social teaching, will soon be made available online. [back]


18. The first appeared in Catholic Dossier; the second appeared originally in First Things and was published subjequently in A Free Society Reader, ed. Michael Novak (Lanham/New York: Lexington Books, 2000), 185-98; the third may be found in The Legacy of Pope John Paul II,Geoffrey Gneuhs, ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 71-93. [back]


19. Long Prairie, MN: Neumann Press, 1992. [back]


20. Published in Living Tradition, January 1993, the review may be accessed at http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt44.html. Father Harrison also has a set of very revealing essays called "Is John Cortney Murray a Reliable Interpreter of Dignitatis Humanae?? Here he documents cases of equivocation and mendacity on the part of Murray, who did all that he could to advance his own theory after the Council, in spite of the fact that the final text differed with him on a number of points. [back]


21. E.E.Y. Hales, Pio Nono: A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (New York: P.J. Kennedy, 1954), 255-73; in the Doubleday Image Book papaerback edition, 265-86. [back]


22. The essay was printed in Historical Problems of Church Renewal, vol. 7 of Concilium (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1965), 89-105. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Dignitatis Humanae: The Interpretive Principles," was originally published in Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vo. 18, No. 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 12-17, and is reprinted here by permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]